by Rory Black
One of Dan Creedy’s shots had dug out a chunk of his scalp as it passed over him. Blood was running freely down his face before he managed to finish the contents of the liquor bottle. It was cheap, rotgut whiskey which had probably been made in a tin bathtub out back, but Iron Eyes did not care. Liquor had never managed to make him drunk, however much of it he consumed. Even the most expensive brands had no effect on his pitifully lean frame.
Yet Iron Eyes was confused. He was bleeding badly, but there was no pain from the ugly wound. It did not even sting. It just bled.
Touching his scalp with his long fingers, Iron Eyes found the deep wound in his straggly hair. Dan Creedy’s final shot had only been an inch too high, he thought.
Iron Eyes stared at the sticky red blood on the tips of his fingers and paused. Could Creedy have been right when he called the bounty hunter a ghost? Ghosts were already dead and that meant they could not feel pain. But he was bleeding like a stuck pig.
Did ghosts bleed? Why was there no pain? Something just did not add up.
As he turned to face the corpse, he suddenly felt giddy. It was a strange feeling which made him rest his lean frame against the wooden bar. Blood ran down the strands of hair before his eyes and dripped. It was a continuous flow of crimson droplets which meant the wound was probably far worse than he had first thought. Yet it still did not hurt.
Why didn’t it hurt? Iron Eyes was troubled by this strange truth. His head was filled with a fog that seemed reluctant to clear.
Stepping away from the bar, Iron Eyes stood over the body of Dan Creedy and looked down at it for several seconds. He waited until his thoughts became sharp again. There was something strange about the outlaw that Iron Eyes had noticed just before they had drawn their guns and fired. Dan Creedy had seemed to be totally unafraid. Not at first when Iron Eyes had entered the saloon, but a split second before they had gone for their weapons.
Why was the outlaw unafraid? Did he know something which Iron Eyes had yet to learn?
Iron Eyes leaned over, grabbed the collar of his prize and then lifted it off the ground and hauled it out into the deserted street. Looking around the wooden structures he finally saw the sheriff’s office.
Above the locked office door, Iron Eyes spied a small window and a dim light behind its lace drape. Dragging the body of his prey across the street towards the office, Iron Eyes felt his long, bony legs buckling for a moment. Somehow he managed to continue until his mule-ear boots found the opposite boardwalk and mounted it. Then he released his grip and dropped the lifeless body at his feet.
Resting his bleeding head against the wall, he began hitting the door with a clenched fist.
Iron Eyes wanted his reward money. He also wanted to know where the nearest doctor was. As his fist struck the door for the tenth time, he saw a man through its glass pane, carrying a candle inside the building, walking hurriedly towards him.
As the man in the white nightgown slid the bolt across on the door, Iron Eyes felt his legs buckle again.
This time, as the door was opened, he was unable to prevent himself from falling at the man’s naked feet.
Chapter Three
Iron Eyes had stubbornly refused to lie down on the leather couch within the back room of the doctor’s office. Even when only half-conscious, he had refused to submit to the demands of either the sheriff or the doctor. The bounty hunter had sat bolt upright on a hardback chair since a half-dressed sheriff had helped him from the boardwalk outside his front door, along to the dimly illuminated building.
There was a silence about Iron Eyes which kept both the lawman and the physician on their toes as his scalp was carefully stitched back together. Neither man had heard him say anything during the long operation.
It was an unnerving sight to see anyone covered in so much of their own blood, but on Iron Eyes, it seemed an even worse apparition. Both the doctor and the sheriff might have thought he was dead if it had not been for the cold, staring grey eyes which continually watched them.
Iron Eyes stared occasionally at the floor during the procedure, and kept looking at the pools of blood which covered it. It was his blood. He also wondered why he could not feel the long needle as it was forced through the skin on his scalp, dragging it back together.
For two hours the sweating physician had toiled over the head of Iron Eyes until he finally satisfied himself that he had stemmed the flow of blood.
The doctor stepped backwards and studied his handiwork before picking up a pair of long-bladed scissors and trimming the ends of the catgut.
‘This stitching will have to be removed in about a week or so, otherwise it will go septic, stranger,’ the doctor informed his silent patient.
Iron Eyes glanced up at the elderly doctor.
‘How do I get this fishing line out of my head, doc?’
The doctor shrugged as he dropped the scissors into the blood-soaked kidney dish which matched his once-white nightgown.
‘It will have to be removed by a doctor, my boy.’
‘In my line of work, I don’t run into your sort very often.’ Iron Eyes touched the wound again. ‘I wanna know how I can remove it myself.’
The doctor cleared his throat as the sheriff walked around the seated man.
‘Cut the stitches at both ends and then carefully slide it out,’ the medical man replied. ‘If you do it wrong, it’ll hurt really bad. I advise you try and get a doctor to do it.’
Iron Eyes nodded. ‘I’ll try and find a doctor to do it.’
‘What’s eating at you, son?’ The doctor could see the face of the seated man seemed troubled by something. Whatever it was, it had to be important, he thought.
‘I can’t feel nothing, doc,’ Iron Eyes said bluntly to the two men before him as he tapped the wound with his fingers. ‘The whole top of my head is dead. It has been since Dan Creedy parted my scalp with his last shot.’
The sheriff rubbed his chin and watched the concerned doctor stepping closer to the seated stranger. The elderly physician stepped to the back of his patient and then picked up the scissors again.
‘I’m going to touch your scalp, son. Tell me when I do so.’
Iron Eyes grunted. ‘Okay, doc. See if you can figure it out.’
The doctor lifted the scissors and touched the neat stitches carefully with its closed blades. There was no reaction from Iron Eyes as he moved the blade along the entire length of the grotesque wound.
‘When you gonna start, old man?’ Iron Eyes asked.
‘I already started and finished, son,’ the doctor said as he dropped the metal scissors into the dish once again, and moved around to look straight at the face hiding behind the limp, bloodstained mane of hair.
‘Well? What does it mean?’ Iron Eyes rose to his feet and felt his legs buckle again before he managed to regain his balance.
‘It could be that the bullet ripped the nerves in your scalp to shreds, stranger,’ the doctor said while watching the tall man moving around his room.
‘Will it return to normal?’ Iron Eyes asked as he glanced across at the two men, who were watching him the way men watch animals in circus cages.
‘It might be temporary and then again it could be permanent.’
The bounty hunter still felt giddy as he placed his hands on the back of the wooden chair and rested.
‘How come I feel like there’s a fog inside my skull?’
‘That might be due to the fact you’ve lost an awful lot of blood, son,’ the doctor answered.
‘Will this be temporary?’
The doctor shrugged.
‘Hopefully. I suggest you eat as much steak as possible over the next week to try and replace the blood you’ve lost.’
‘Steak.’ Iron Eyes repeated the word as he handed over a fistful of silver dollars to the medical man.
The sheriff stepped closer to the strange bounty hunter.
‘I wired the authorities for your reward money just after I brung you to the doc’s, mister. Who exactly
are you, anyways?’
‘They call me Iron Eyes, Sheriff.’
Suddenly the two men seemed alarmed. It was obvious to the bounty hunter that they had heard of him and his reputation frightened them.
‘It will probably take until around noon before I get permission to pay you the bounty, Iron Eyes,’ the sheriff said dryly as he felt the spittle in his mouth evaporating. ‘Might even take longer.’
‘That’ll be fine, Sheriff.’ Iron Eyes glanced at the law officer who was still wearing his nightshirt.
The sheriff cleared his throat.
‘How much do you know about the late Dan Creedy, Iron Eyes?’
‘Only his value.’
The doctor moved towards both men and touched the arm of the lawman.
‘What are you getting at, Sheriff?’
‘Dan Creedy has three brothers and by what I’ve heard, they rode together,’ the sheriff mumbled. ‘I figure they’ll be a tad upset when they hear the news. They’ll hunt you down and get their vengeance, Iron Eyes.’
‘They can try.’ Iron Eyes almost smiled.
‘You mean that they might be close at hand?’ the doctor asked his troubled friend. ‘They might swoop down into Bonny and shoot up the town trying to find out who killed their brother?’
‘Yeah, they might have arranged to meet up in Bonny. They ain’t gonna like finding Dan dead.’ The lawman knew more about the Creedys than he was either able or willing to admit.
Iron Eyes stood upright and then began walking to the door of the dimly lit office. Resting a hand on the door handle, he paused and looked back at the pair of elderly men. They had shown him kindness and he found it confusing.
‘Quit fretting, boys. As soon as I get my reward money, I’ll ride out of this damn town. If n them Creedys want to trail me, let them. I’ll be waiting to collect their rewards too.’
‘Ain’t you even a little bit scared of Dan’s brothers, boy?’ the sheriff asked as Iron Eyes turned the handle and opened the door. ‘I heard tell that they’re mighty mean.’
‘Meaner than me?’ Iron Eyes raised an eyebrow.
‘Maybe,’ the sheriff gulped.
‘There ain’t no such critter, Sheriff.’
Watching Iron Eyes striding out into the dark street, both men seemed unable to take their eyes from him as he headed back in the direction of the saloon. Both men were aware that this was no ordinary stranger they had within the boundaries of Bonny. This was Iron Eyes and he had killed Dan Creedy for the price on his head.
How long would it take for the Creedy brothers to arrive?
Chapter Four
Iron Eyes had somehow stayed awake for what remained of the blood-soaked night. Primed with an inch-thick steak and two bottles of whiskey, the bounty hunter seemed either unwilling or uninterested in finding a place to sleep until dawn. He had done what he had set out to do and killed Dan Creedy, but it had been a close call. Creedy had not wanted to die and looked as if he truly believed he could defeat Iron Eyes. The thought troubled the skeletal figure as he stared into his glass, because for the first time in all his years of hunting down outlaws, he had been seriously wounded.
The saloon had remained open for the solitary customer, who sat at a table only a few feet away from the bloodstained sawdust which bore evidence to his last conquest. The bartender snored in an easy chair as Iron Eyes continued to pour one measure after another of the amber liquid into his glass.
Iron Eyes cast his hollow bullet-colored pupils around the silent saloon, and wondered how much more blood he could have afforded to lose before he would have joined Dan Creedy in the very bowels of Lucifer’s eternal flames. Iron Eyes had been wounded many times before but had never bled like that. He stared at the pool of red sawdust near the bar and the trail which led out of the saloon.
As the sun finally rose far off in the prairie and light washed over the small township of Bonny, Iron Eyes continued drinking his whiskey. Whatever this new day had in store for him, he would face it with the same contempt he had faced all of the others.
He had eaten the steak meal as advised by the elderly doctor but felt no better. How long did it take for blood to be made in a body such as his anyway? Iron Eyes had tried to understand the old physician’s words but, to him, it did not make any sense. How could eating grub make blood? Maybe it was because steak was usually filled with blood and the doctor meant that as long as he somehow consumed the red liquid, it would fill his empty veins.
Iron Eyes rubbed his face angrily. As the morning light entered the saloon, he noticed the dried blood which stained the shoulders of his coat. The browning patches stretched down his sleeves and covered most of his clothing.
Dan Creedy’s last shot would have killed most men, but Iron Eyes was not like other men. Perhaps the outlaw’s words had been true and he was already dead. Looking at the evidence of how much blood he had lost, the bounty hunter wondered if there could possibly be any left.
The whiskey had gone down his throat better than the tough steak. It always went down better. If the doctor had said that drinking vast volumes of rotgut liquor made blood, Iron Eyes could have seen the sense in it. At least both were liquid.
He touched the stitches and wondered again why his scalp was still totally numb. Would it matter if it stayed that way? It might even be an advantage in the future should anyone break a chair over his skull.
The giddiness had not troubled him since he had left the doctor’s house. Maybe it had only happened because his head had been split open and once it was sewn back together, it was a thing of the past.
Iron Eyes liked that idea. He swallowed another glass of the whiskey and stared down again at the sawdust before him. Dan Creedy’s body had been removed by someone before he had returned to the saloon. He knew that: the sheriff must have awoken the town undertaker when he had wired off for permission to pay the bounty money. So much blood had been spilled on to the sawdust, and most of it had been his own.
He could still see the outline in the sawdust where Creedy’s lifeless body had lain.
The sound of a rooster echoed off the buildings around the silent saloon. Iron Eyes pushed the plate away from him and rose to his feet. He carried the whiskey bottle in his hand and replaced its cork into the black glass neck before dropping it into one of his deep pockets.
The town was still asleep as he walked out on to the boardwalk and looked at his pitiful horse. It was in a sorrowful state but Iron Eyes had never cared for horses. To him, they were simply things which he rode until they dropped, and then he simply acquired a replacement.
Finding one of his long, black cigars amid the countless bullets in his other coat pocket, Iron Eyes placed it between his sharp teeth and then found a box of matches in his shirt pocket.
The heat was already rising off everything the blazing morning sun touched as the bounty hunter strode across the street in the direction of the sound coming from the noisy rooster.
Rounding the corner, Iron Eyes spied a small fenced-off garden filled with a score of hens pecking at the ground, and the long-necked colorful cock-bird standing upon the henhouse. Iron Eyes walked up to the fence and lit his cigar.
It had been a long while since he had been so close to such a domestic creature, and the scene that faced him seemed strange. He did not like it.
The rooster continued crowing at the rising sun as smoke drifted from Iron Eyes’ mouth. Faster than the blink of an eye, he drew one of his Navy Colts from his belt, cocked its hammer and fired a single shot.
As the head of the rooster went in a different direction to that of its body, the bounty hunter turned and began walking back towards the saloon. ‘That’ll teach him.’ He smiled.
They were a gruesome-looking bunch by anyone’s yardstick. The trio of dust-caked riders attracted the attention of every eye along the main street of the sprawling town of Tequila Flats as they rode into its heart. Set a mere twenty miles south of the remote Bonny, Tequila Flats was everything the smaller town was not
and would never be.
It had wealth, and it showed.
Dawn had only just broken a mere twenty minutes earlier, but the streets were teeming with more people than the three riders had seen in over a month of riding. Too many people, they thought. Too many curious people.
It had not been part of their original plan to enter the boundaries of such a prosperous town because they knew, where there was money, there were usually far too many law officers ready and willing to protect it. Tequila Flats overflowed with well-armed deputies who knew how to use their weaponry and prayed for any excuse to prove themselves to their sheriff.
The Creedy brothers eased their mounts through the busy streets until they located the large livery stables at the very heart of the town. They knew coming here was risky, but they also knew something was wrong, otherwise they would have already met up with their brother, Dan. There had to be a good reason for his not joining his brothers and they had to try and find out what.
Entering Tequila Flats might furnish the answers. It might also furnish them with coffins if just one of the law officers recognized their dust-covered faces and found the Wanted posters they matched.
Bob Creedy was a man of graying appearance who seemed far older than his twenty-eight years. He dismounted first outside the impressive livery stable, as his brothers carefully looked back at the curious town residents before getting off their saddles.
Treat Creedy was very similar in looks yet had color in his hair and skin. He was less than a year younger than Bob, but looked at least ten years Bob’s junior. He held on to his reins and watched the faces that observed them with a sharpness that he had honed to a fine art, for he was the gang’s lookout.
The youngest of the Creedys was called Frankie, and was far shorter than any of his brothers. He looked little more than a boy, but in truth was nearly twenty-four years of age. He had killed a man for each of his years with the pair of deadly Remingtons he wore hidden beneath his trail coat. Frankie Creedy was by far the most lethal of any of them, yet looked the epitome of sweetness and light.
